


Without You Within Me (Where I'm going)

by Diana_Prallon



Series: History Books Forgot About Us [43]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: 90's Music, Alternate Universe - Boy Band, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Beards (Relationships), Closeted Character, Fame, Multi, Post-Break Up, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 05:37:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4907464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diana_Prallon/pseuds/Diana_Prallon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He didn’t want to sit there and smile as he watched the man he loved marry someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Without You Within Me (Where I'm going)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dark_K](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dark_K/gifts).



> ... Okay, so, story time: a few months ago I came down with a sudden case of Real-People-Shipping and flailing around because of it; but I've never would be able to write about it. This story is particularly inspired by it. ANY COINCIDENCES are mere... Well, coincidences. 
> 
> The title comes from Backstreet Boys' song "Incomplete" (which I do not advise to hearing while thinking about the finale).
> 
> To my BFF, that had to deal with me flailing about so many things and that was dragged into shipping these two with me.

**2003**

  
People seemed to think that fame meant having it all — the money, the adoration, the girls.

After over a decade together, they knew better.

Fame was a fickle friend, and a harsh companion.

Small, every day things became impossible.

Secrets were often splayed in the pages of magazines, always searching for scandals.

Well, Arthur wasn’t going to be caught in any of them.

Not anymore, at least.

He sat in the corner of the garden, staring at the flowers, lost in thought. He knew people would be wondering where he was, he knew he was late for their rehearsal, but he couldn’t deal with it, not now. He couldn’t dance and sing and smile as if all was good when his world was coming crashing down.

It was not even a surprise, not really.

But the invitations to an engagement dinner suddenly made it all much more… real.

Arthur didn’t want it to be real. He didn’t want to sit there and smile as he watched the man he loved marry someone else.

Some woman that he would never have met without fame.

He sighed, burring his head on his arms, hiding from the world the tears that sprang from his eyes.

And they would expect him to be _happy_ , they would expect him to _give a toast_. As if they didn’t know — as if he was _this_ good at hiding that the very people that lived around him 24/7 were oblivious to how he felt.

It was not that he disliked Freya; she was lovely, always so quiet, but firm. She was a rock and had held Merlin during some very difficult times for them.

Gwaine being sent to rehab for excessive drinking. Lance walking away from them, swearing he wanted nothing more but to be a family man, to have a quiet life by Gwen — and not even Gwen had been able to dissuade him.

Merlin had stayed with Arthur through it all.

Well, Percival had never wavered either, but it was different. Percival said little. Percival had his own, quiet way of handling things, and one looking from the outside might even miss how he was grasping at straws between Arthur’s tantrums, Gwaine’s drinking and Lance’s absence.

Arthur knew — he was thankful for it.

And now — now that they were back together, now it that everything was back on, Merlin had sprung this on them.

Marriage.

If Arthur showed any reservation, they would tell him Merlin & Freya wouldn’t be like that, that Merlin wouldn’t walk away, that singing was his life, the gift that God had granted him.

God.

Merlin’s God alone knew the true extent of his pain — how it was more than some silly infatuation, some left-over teenager self-flagellation thing in an unrequited love that would never, ever be.

It hadn’t been unrequited.

There had been moments — long looks, open smiles, soft touches, tentative kisses.

It seemed so long ago now.

There had been confession in the dark and crying, pain and a continuous fear — of discovery, of betrayal, of damnation.

It had been too much to add to it all.

Freya was supposed to be a distraction, a show, a beard — and, somehow, in the middle of the way, she had become the true thing while Arthur became just a dark, little secret that was never to be mentioned.

Something that Merlin would never admit to.

Screw it.

He wasn’t going to take it — he wasn’t going to just sit there and wait, to see his dreams and hopes being shattered by nothing more than fear.

Arthur fished his phone out of his pocket and dialled out a number he had memorised in the long hours staring at it and wondering what he should do since the first words about the engagement had been spoken.

“Hello, Cenred? I’ve got a story for you.”


End file.
